Zombie Appreciation Society
Posted: Wednesday April 12th, 2023 10:05amIn a recent post Advancement – how to do it? we calculated that the "Gold Reward Value" for a Zombie was 16gc, compare that to the other common monsters and note in particular the lack of significant difference between the Skeleton and the Zombie.
• Goblin 12gc
• Orc 26gc
• Skeleton 14gc
• Zombie 16gc
The Orc, the big brother of the Goblin, is roughly twice as effective, the Zombie is pretty much the same as the Skeleton, hardly an upgrade and this is especially important to note this lack of difference when we look at dungeons populated exclusively or almost exclusively with Undead, we have only 2 types of foot soldiers available and with the stats given they are pretty much equivalent
The low number of figures provided in the base game + the big 2 expansions, relative to the other common monsters, shows Zombies are considered as represented as the less common Fimir and Mummies with 6 figures as opposed to their nominal equivalents the Orc at 16 and both Goblins and Skeletons having double the number of figures as Zombies
• Goblin (12)
• Orc (16)
• Fimir (6)
• Skeleton (12)
• Zombie (6)
• Mummy (6)
Take all of this along with a low frequency of appearance in-quest (details below but the Zombie appears less often than the Fimir which technically should be a less common monster based on its “value”) and they feel undervalued, underutilised and underappreciated.
Monster frequency is Game System / Gathering Storm Quest book (will expand this at some point to include the other 2 of the big 3 quest books…) taking into account Wandering Monster type and frequency is as below (roughly) in terms of total number of occurrences
• Goblin 46
• Orc 73
• Fimir 39
• Skeleton 42
• Zombie 30
• Mummy 20
When you look upon these shambling horrors, these reanimated corpses with their innards spilling out, their rolling dead eyes and the stench of the grave accompanying them and you have to ask yourself, where is the love?
What attributes do Zombies have in the wider context of horror fiction...
1. Slow, dumb, low initiative
2. Dangerous at close range
3. Dangerous in numbers
4. Hard to put down
Turning to our HeroQuest Zombie, we find...
1. With a movement value of a mere 4, the lowest in the game, the Zombie is the slowest (and as the Hero roll to move combined with Monster fixed movement mechanism in HeroQuest includes a built-in initiative roll* this feels a fair representation)
2. AD2, with an attack strength matching that of the weakest monster in the game, the Goblin, hard-hitting is not a phrase you would use to describe our Zombies (although maybe hard on the nose)
3. An oft used but oddly phrased property, what monster isn't more dangerous in numbers, I'm yet to see a situation in HQ or indeed any other game where a hero says "we've got 6 monster type X incoming" and another hero replies "thank the gods i was worried there would only be one of them", perhaps the phrase is a euphemism that really means, not dangerous when encountered singly but may often be encountered in numbers which can cause a problem. Fair enough but there isn’t a lot I can do about the number of figures provided.
4. With BP1 and DD3, our Zombie is technically the hardest to put down of the 4 low-level monsters, but only by a whisker, that extra DD means little in effect and combined with the combat ineffectiveness caused by the thematically accurate very low movement score, not sure it would qualify as hard to put down.
(In combat simulations for HQ, the Movement value tends not to be taken into account, for the reason that it is extremely difficult to model, but the lower the movement value of a monster the less the likelihood is that they will strike first. In HQ for low level monsters, not striking first often translates into not striking at all, as they often die from the first round of Hero attacks, which renders their combat effectiveness zero. As I said, hard to model)
So what am I suggesting
1. No change to movement, that is good as it is
2. Increase AD to 3, to better represent the “dangerous at close range”, 3AD on adjacent opponents is as close a range as you can get and AD3 is the real maximum AD for a low-level monster, and this better represents the large cleaver-like weapon the figure is equipped with, got to be the double handed equivalent of a broadsword
3. As mentioned above, Fair enough but there isn’t a lot I can do about the number of figures provided.
This alone is a stumbling step forward but leaves the Zombie with the same Stats as an Orc (granted movement is quite different) which isn't great from a monster differentiation point of view.
4. So now to point 4 and a concept that I refer to as "squidginess", HQ and many other games have 2 independent stats that combine to determine "endurance" or more simply how long something remaining standing. In HQ these are DD, represents some or all the following: ability to duck, dodge, parry and generally avoid damage from CC blows, armour also turns, deflects or absorbs damage, making the wearer harder to damage and BP which reflects the character ability to absorb (not avoid) but take damage. So you could for example have a monster with a DD of 1 or even zero, and a high BP like 6 and this would represent some form of Minecraft style Slime Cube, easy to hit, low ability to avoid blows, low or no armour, but a great capacity to absorb damage, high squidginess, equally on the other end of the scale you could have something like a door, that in HQ are traditionally represented as having DD of 6 and BP of 1, very hard, difficult to inflict significant damage, but when struck with enough force they yield in full, brittle, low squidginess
I always imagine Zombies to be higher squidginess. Any armour even natural armour that they may have will have long rotted into ineffectiveness, their ability to duck, dodge and avoid blows is minimal, as is their inclination to avoid damage, so their ability to avoid damage you would expect to be low, but a 3DD for a low level monster is in fact the highest, on the other hand their BP of 1, their squidginess, that I would expect to be high is in fact low, minimal actually.
So perhaps a lower DD of 1, but an extra BP, like this…
Note: haven’t yet number-crunched this to see how it compares…but aiming for something a little higher than an Orc but less than a Mummy…
This option appears the better one in terms of keeping it simple, no new ability or mechanism, just extending the multiple BP mechanism already present in the game to another monster type (and not a common one at that), however there is another option that introduces a little complexity (which I am generally opposed to) for the GM but also adds a lot of richness to the game and has in my gaming groups transformed the Zombie from the most bland of Monsters to something worthy of a thrill (er!), but adding even a touch of complexity might put some people off (and I might get told off by Kurgan!) but still….
This special ability doesn’t really make a statistically significant difference is actual play, for example 1/6 chance of reanimation across the 30 occurrences in the whole GS equates to about 5 cases of reanimation (and 1 chance of double re-animation) across 14 quests, so one per 3 quests however once player have experienced one of the buggers getting back up after it has already been killed induces quite a reaction – a combination of wow/shock/horror – and the possibility of it happening adds a big kick to the game!
• Goblin 12gc
• Orc 26gc
• Skeleton 14gc
• Zombie 16gc
The Orc, the big brother of the Goblin, is roughly twice as effective, the Zombie is pretty much the same as the Skeleton, hardly an upgrade and this is especially important to note this lack of difference when we look at dungeons populated exclusively or almost exclusively with Undead, we have only 2 types of foot soldiers available and with the stats given they are pretty much equivalent
SE Zombie Monster Card wrote:
• Move 4 squares
• Attack 2 dice
• Defend 3 dice
• Body 1
• Mind 0
The low number of figures provided in the base game + the big 2 expansions, relative to the other common monsters, shows Zombies are considered as represented as the less common Fimir and Mummies with 6 figures as opposed to their nominal equivalents the Orc at 16 and both Goblins and Skeletons having double the number of figures as Zombies
• Goblin (12)
• Orc (16)
• Fimir (6)
• Skeleton (12)
• Zombie (6)
• Mummy (6)
Take all of this along with a low frequency of appearance in-quest (details below but the Zombie appears less often than the Fimir which technically should be a less common monster based on its “value”) and they feel undervalued, underutilised and underappreciated.
Monster frequency is Game System / Gathering Storm Quest book (will expand this at some point to include the other 2 of the big 3 quest books…) taking into account Wandering Monster type and frequency is as below (roughly) in terms of total number of occurrences
• Goblin 46
• Orc 73
• Fimir 39
• Skeleton 42
• Zombie 30
• Mummy 20
When you look upon these shambling horrors, these reanimated corpses with their innards spilling out, their rolling dead eyes and the stench of the grave accompanying them and you have to ask yourself, where is the love?
What attributes do Zombies have in the wider context of horror fiction...
1. Slow, dumb, low initiative
2. Dangerous at close range
3. Dangerous in numbers
4. Hard to put down
Turning to our HeroQuest Zombie, we find...
1. With a movement value of a mere 4, the lowest in the game, the Zombie is the slowest (and as the Hero roll to move combined with Monster fixed movement mechanism in HeroQuest includes a built-in initiative roll* this feels a fair representation)
2. AD2, with an attack strength matching that of the weakest monster in the game, the Goblin, hard-hitting is not a phrase you would use to describe our Zombies (although maybe hard on the nose)
3. An oft used but oddly phrased property, what monster isn't more dangerous in numbers, I'm yet to see a situation in HQ or indeed any other game where a hero says "we've got 6 monster type X incoming" and another hero replies "thank the gods i was worried there would only be one of them", perhaps the phrase is a euphemism that really means, not dangerous when encountered singly but may often be encountered in numbers which can cause a problem. Fair enough but there isn’t a lot I can do about the number of figures provided.
4. With BP1 and DD3, our Zombie is technically the hardest to put down of the 4 low-level monsters, but only by a whisker, that extra DD means little in effect and combined with the combat ineffectiveness caused by the thematically accurate very low movement score, not sure it would qualify as hard to put down.
(In combat simulations for HQ, the Movement value tends not to be taken into account, for the reason that it is extremely difficult to model, but the lower the movement value of a monster the less the likelihood is that they will strike first. In HQ for low level monsters, not striking first often translates into not striking at all, as they often die from the first round of Hero attacks, which renders their combat effectiveness zero. As I said, hard to model)
So what am I suggesting
1. No change to movement, that is good as it is
2. Increase AD to 3, to better represent the “dangerous at close range”, 3AD on adjacent opponents is as close a range as you can get and AD3 is the real maximum AD for a low-level monster, and this better represents the large cleaver-like weapon the figure is equipped with, got to be the double handed equivalent of a broadsword
3. As mentioned above, Fair enough but there isn’t a lot I can do about the number of figures provided.
This alone is a stumbling step forward but leaves the Zombie with the same Stats as an Orc (granted movement is quite different) which isn't great from a monster differentiation point of view.
4. So now to point 4 and a concept that I refer to as "squidginess", HQ and many other games have 2 independent stats that combine to determine "endurance" or more simply how long something remaining standing. In HQ these are DD, represents some or all the following: ability to duck, dodge, parry and generally avoid damage from CC blows, armour also turns, deflects or absorbs damage, making the wearer harder to damage and BP which reflects the character ability to absorb (not avoid) but take damage. So you could for example have a monster with a DD of 1 or even zero, and a high BP like 6 and this would represent some form of Minecraft style Slime Cube, easy to hit, low ability to avoid blows, low or no armour, but a great capacity to absorb damage, high squidginess, equally on the other end of the scale you could have something like a door, that in HQ are traditionally represented as having DD of 6 and BP of 1, very hard, difficult to inflict significant damage, but when struck with enough force they yield in full, brittle, low squidginess
I always imagine Zombies to be higher squidginess. Any armour even natural armour that they may have will have long rotted into ineffectiveness, their ability to duck, dodge and avoid blows is minimal, as is their inclination to avoid damage, so their ability to avoid damage you would expect to be low, but a 3DD for a low level monster is in fact the highest, on the other hand their BP of 1, their squidginess, that I would expect to be high is in fact low, minimal actually.
So perhaps a lower DD of 1, but an extra BP, like this…
Squidgy Zombie
• Move 4 squares
• Attack 3 dice
• Defend 1 die
• Body 2
• Mind 0
Note: haven’t yet number-crunched this to see how it compares…but aiming for something a little higher than an Orc but less than a Mummy…
This option appears the better one in terms of keeping it simple, no new ability or mechanism, just extending the multiple BP mechanism already present in the game to another monster type (and not a common one at that), however there is another option that introduces a little complexity (which I am generally opposed to) for the GM but also adds a lot of richness to the game and has in my gaming groups transformed the Zombie from the most bland of Monsters to something worthy of a thrill (er!), but adding even a touch of complexity might put some people off (and I might get told off by Kurgan!) but still….
Zombie
• Move 4 squares
• Attack 3 dice
• Defend 2 die
• Body 1
• Mind 0
Reanimate – when a character with this ability is reduced to zero Body points, replace the figure with a skull marker. This square is empty for LOS calculations and moving through but cannot be occupied. At the end of the EWP’s next turn roll a combat die for each skull marker, on a roll of a, restore the creature to the square at full BP, but it cannot move or attack until the next turn, otherwise remove the marker
This special ability doesn’t really make a statistically significant difference is actual play, for example 1/6 chance of reanimation across the 30 occurrences in the whole GS equates to about 5 cases of reanimation (and 1 chance of double re-animation) across 14 quests, so one per 3 quests however once player have experienced one of the buggers getting back up after it has already been killed induces quite a reaction – a combination of wow/shock/horror – and the possibility of it happening adds a big kick to the game!